


What a brilliant man and Prime Minister, taken away from us so dreadfully early

by corporates



Category: Political RPF - UK 20th-21st c.
Genre: Alastair's POV, Ali being an asshole, Ali's hatred of the media, Gen, Obscure reference to The Trial of Tony Blair, Peter being an asshole, Peter's emo-ness, Something that isn't shippy???, WOW!!, abandoned house, no names mentioned, shouldn't need to be tagged tbh, well maybe one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-12
Updated: 2016-07-12
Packaged: 2018-07-23 16:00:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7469913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corporates/pseuds/corporates
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>May his sincerity never fail him.</p>
<p>More writing thanks to English lessons… just, y'know, months late. We were gathering prompts, and someone suggested haunted house but our teacher wanted vague, so she put abandoned house. I gave her vague. A lot of this is added and edited stuff, though. Most of it, actually.</p>
<p>This is awfully topical, I'm really sorry — as I say, I started this months ago and didn't intend to post it a few days after the Chilcot Report.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What a brilliant man and Prime Minister, taken away from us so dreadfully early

The first thing I see I can't take my eyes off. To call it a shrine would be too flattering — though no doubt if he could experience what they made of his death he wouldn't allow me to call it anything else. But me, I'll declare it a collection of revolting irony, arranged neatly with the main lie written in ostentatious capital letters: “ **WE WILL MISS YOU** ”. The choice of flowers is a cause for grimace, but bitterly not unexpected. Bile rises in my throat and I have to be alone so I shove past the cameras and questions, the only answer given a helpful array of unsanitary language.

When I push the front door it swings wide open, to reveal an empty hallway that was once so alive, bustling with family and love and history — now the photographs on the walls feel like a taunt. The house is cold. The house was never cold when he was alive; he liked the warmth and preferred radiators to clothes. Even trying to recall how many times I'd come across him wandering around in his birthday suit only raises a faint smile that lasts for less than a second.

I screw up my eyes and breathe in through my nose, hold it — counting, counting, counting — out through my mouth, and walk into the lounge. He's there. Not the dead man, the other man, the man who looks like death, with his long black coat and his collar turned up and an expression that says, “I told you so.” All that is actually made verbal — softly spoken, with words carefully, meticulously pronounced — is a greeting and then: “It really is rather awful out there.”

I've never been good at responding to statements of the obvious. He's never been good at making them, though when a friend dies, especially in this way, everything seems to turn itself on its head and even we can't spin it back again. “I expected it to be shittier in here but it's actually... like a memorial should be. True.”

He raises a brow. “Even for a place such as this?”

I don't reply. Who could reply to that? Once, I could, a long time ago, when bold was what I was known for and a label others would shun I was almost proud of. We had identity. He still does, of course — he'll never lose his throne — but me, I'm what once was and what could have been, just a name on the wrong side of the argument, doomed to be part of the few that could have stopped it all, and didn't. I was supposed to be happier. I think I was for a time; then shit got radical and there was too much hatred and too much death, and they had to get their closure somehow. Now there was one too many bullets. Or, count the holes in the window and that's three too many bullets. It's a wonder no one else got hit; gift from God, someone that's not me might say.

Turning away from the window, I cast my eyes about the room and for a heartbeat everything seems almost normal; I could be here for a quick catch-up, a chat with the kids and a customary express of regret at how rarely we see each other anymore. Neither of us would even dare hint it's not exactly what we regret.

That's until I catch sight of what suddenly puts it all in perspective, that this is not in the slightest, at all, a normal visit. “Oh.”

He follows my gaze. “Didn't you notice?”

“No, I didn't fucking... Oh, shit, that isn't for the newspapers, is it?” His dark eyes are all I need for confirmation that, yes, the blood splatters of our friend are left for the newspapers and the photographs and the fucking _stories_ , so many stories, opinions intertwined subtly, dangerously, capitalising, hypnotising, energising — to the point of breaking, and someone fucks up and then someone else is dead-- I feel a sharp pain shoot up my arm and for a second I think I've been shot as well, but I find my fist has connected with the wall; not once, but twice, now thrice — yet somehow I force myself to stop, if only for the faint realisation that this is not my wall.

“Calm down,” he says, his tone still gentle as ever.

“I think I have a _right_ for hatred--”

“Yes, that's what they thought too,” he says.

That shuts me up. I stand there, idly digging a blunt nail into the broken flesh of my knuckle but feeling no blood trickling; my fingers are so white, I've clenched my hands so tightly, there's no blood to trickle. It takes me a while to form thoughts into words, and it soon occurs to me I can't think much but: “Fuck you,” I spit, eyes narrowed to slits, the picture of aggression, dimly aware I shouldn't be saying that but too _“incandescent”_ to give a single fuck about him. “How can you just sit there on his bloodstained sofa with your legs neatly crossed, churning out your holier-than-thou metaphysics bullshit, fucking philosophising on our friend's death?” I scoff and imitate his tone: “Ohh, it can't _possibly_ be truthful here-- Do you even fucking care? _Can_ you even fucking care?”

He holds my gaze, unflinching. “Can you care about anything but your own feelings; the impact on you, and you only?”

I'm about to give the reflex answer and throw him the middle finger, but I pause. “That's… bullshit,” I say defensively. “It's what you're supposed to do… here, places like this.” I dig my nail deeper, punishing myself for my hesitation, but my words don't falter as much as my conviction.

Nevertheless, I don't wait to hear his response; I spin around and storm out the room, down the hallway, past the photographs-- but stop at the door. We have to leave together. He knows that, of course, and takes only some heartbeats to arrive silently beside me. I trust he realises the discussion is over, too, and sure enough: he says nothing as he pulls the front door open again and we step out in learned unison.

There's a fucker with a protest sign, standing in the midst of the crowd outside, staring straight at me: “ALL'S FAIR FOR MURDERER BLAIR”. Painted blood drips over the sign's words and a crude caricature adorns its top left corner. There's a group of them actually, all giving me the evils like I was the one with the gun — which to them I am, but to me they own some of the blame; the activists, the whistle-blowers, the fucking hippie kids getting up my arse when they don't know a thing about leadership. “How do they let these people in here?”

He sighs and gives me a sideways look. “I wouldn't put them down as being so stupid.” As always, I hope he's wrong. I tap the nearest person on the shoulder and tell her to “get that asshole to sod off”, and she looks at me, all makeup and short skirt, all bright eyes and grins. Why would anyone smile at an event like this? Is that a mockery too?

“Is that all, sir? Wouldn't you like to answer a few questions?” I just glare at her so she thanks me and scuttles off, but at that moment a camera flashes and captures my disgust, eyebrows overhanging narrowed eyes, mouth twisted into a grimace. There's another photo the press can use when they have a particularly biting passage to write about me.

Automatically I distort my expression and manage a deep, forlorn look, making for a pretty picture as I stand in front of the house, pleasing the cameras as he would have wanted me to — and for once I'm not the most dishonest one here. The flashes are blinding, I think, but not to the people in front of them. It's sick, and I thought I left it a long time ago, but I realise I'm still a part of it, or perhaps it's still a part of me. I'm ingrained in history now, and we were never the victors.

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't feel it necessary to put an Archive Warning of “Major Character Death” because it starts off like that, it doesn't happen IN the story.


End file.
